Which Coalition could form a new French government? |Latest France news|France
Something is going to happen in France!
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00French President Emmanuel Macron has begun talks with key figures from several political parties
00:04to form a new government, including a new prime minister. Inconclusive parliamentary
00:09elections nearly two months ago dealt a blow to Macron's centrist alliance. He met with leaders
00:15from the left, centrists and conservatives on Friday and is due to hold talks with the far
00:19right on Monday. The leftist New Popular Front coalition won the most seats but fell far short
00:26of a majority. Macron's own term ends in 2027 but he could see his power limited by a future
00:33government. Correspondent Rosie Burchard is at the LSE palace in Paris for us and she reminded us
00:41how the French elections ended. Well when President Macron called for these snap elections
00:47back in June he said that his goal was to clarify the political situation in France. Well that seemed
00:53to quite spectacularly backfire because not only did his political grouping, his centrist grouping
01:00lose its majority, but there turned out to be no majority whatsoever. So literally a situation of
01:05less political clarity than ever before in this incarnation of France in the fifth republic,
01:10a hung parliament, and that is unprecedented. It's hard to overstate this compared to other
01:15countries which are nearby, for example Germany or Belgium or the Netherlands. There just is no
01:21political history or culture here of coalition building so we're still in a pretty unclear
01:25situation today. Yeah so they're having to learn something that they've never had to do before.
01:29Macron said he's talking to all of the parties now. What are the possible coalitions here?
01:38Well listen it's still looking pretty murky because we know one thing for sure and that is
01:43that the political group which came out on top in these last snap legislative elections, that's the
01:49centre to far left new popular front alliance, they say the prime ministerial job, the job of
01:54forming a government should be rightfully theirs. However it's still looking pretty far out of reach
02:00for them at the moment because we've seen different political groupings coming into these talks today
02:05and essentially saying that they have a red line because in that leftist political group there is
02:11a far left party called France Unbowed. It's seen as basically extremists by parties which are on
02:18the right of the political spectrum. Now that means it's really still all to play for. We're
02:24expecting that President Macron might come out with a name for his prime ministerial pick next
02:29week, perhaps Tuesday before the Paralympic Games start but he's a president who likes to
02:35come out with surprises so we really don't know yet who he's going to put forward. That candidate
02:39for the leftist alliance looks like she has pretty slim chances so far. Lucy Castaix who says
02:44she thinks the job should be hers, so far looking unsuccessful. And I'm wondering what about the
02:49far right moving forward, you know Macron he called snap elections because of the gains that
02:54the far right made in the European parliamentary elections but in these snap elections in France
03:00the far right lost some support so where do things stand moving forward?
03:08Well they were locked out of power insofar as they slipped to third place when it came to
03:13the second round of parliamentary elections but it should be noted that the far right still
03:17now has more parliamentary seats than ever before here in France and they therefore remain
03:22a political force to be reckoned with. They won't be getting seats or members in a government
03:27cabinet moving forward but you can be sure that the leader of the far right here in France Marine
03:31Le Pen still sees herself as a president in waiting. We're talking currently about who will
03:37be the prime minister, who will be government cabinet ministers but the point is that the
03:42bigger political prize in France is the presidency, Emmanuel Macron's role itself.
03:46His term runs until 2027 and that's when we'll see likely again the far right trying to challenge
03:51him and get that biggest role in French politics. GW is Rosie Burchard with the latest from Paris
03:56tonight. Rosie as always thank you.